Monstrous Compendium I

Monstrous Compendium I

See all the crappy monsters was writing up over the years? What a lame statblock, right? Wouldn't it be great to have a more extensive tome with all the flavor information, revised rules, and lots of additional stuff? I've been working on it for quite a while, and the first volume is ready for public release. This version is final in the sense that there won't be anything new, but I may update it with errata. This is only volume I, and there's definitely more where it came from - it just takes a while.

Link - Monstrous Compendium I

Wizardry: Fun with Prestidigitation

Wizardry: Fun with Prestidigitation

D&D, being a combat-focused system, combines all the minor utility spells that wizards would likely to learn to make their day-to-day lives easier into a single spell - Prestidigitation. GURPS is an entirely different beast, with plenty of spells in GURPS Magic that a D&D player would call useless. Then, we even have GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells that is full of them. From what I gathered, the edition that expanded upon Prestidigitation is the most detail is, surprisingly, D&D 3.0 (not 3.5). Generally speaking, D&D 3.0 seems to have much more soul than 3.5 despite being almost identical mechanically. Tome & Blood has a page titled "Fun With Prestidigitation" that says what this spell can do in a much clearer way. So, let's adapt them to wizardry, as there can never be too many cheap spells. After all, such spells make regular improvisation much more attractive.

    Change had to be... changed. Here, it transforms up to 8 ounces of any solid material into something else, but due to Create being limited to bulk material, it cannot create "complex" objects as a product. The original spell could, for example, turn a coin into a ring, but it isn't possible here.

    Chill and Warm had to go, as having Cool and Warm that change the ambient temperature should be enough for me.

    Clean lets you wash dishes, floors, etc. Decided to build it via Telekinesis instead of Control Grime.

    Dampen uses the Rinse perk as a base. An arbitrary Cosmic enhancement changes the way it works, but all the other limitation compensate for it.

    Flavor is a spell that requires jumping through so many hoops that any sane person would probably just call it a perk or something like that. I'm I'm not any sane person. Since we already have Season based on a GURPS Magic food spell, at first, I wanted to just rename it to Flavor, but I noticed that their effects are quite different. You see, Season adds flavors that can be added with seasoning to food. Flavor makes anything, not just food, taste differently. Season has a permanent duration, but Flavor lasts only 30 minutes (it's 1 hour in the original version, but I really wanted to get the cost within 5 points to be able to buy this spell as a learned spell for just one point). Season used Control Food as the base, but here I'd have to use a godlike version of Control that would be at least 30 points base. Create has Solid, Liquid, and Gas as the highest tier of matter, but Flavor is supposed to be able to change the flavor of solids and liquids, so 30 points would probably be too low. Instead, I decided to asspull Control Flavor as a rare category of process-based control from GURPS Powers: The Weird, and use the standard mass-based limit. I even had to use Takes Extra Time 2.5, -25% to squeeze in the final -5% of limitations, because I really didn't want to increase the FP cost for such a minor spell. This let me barely fit this spell within the 5-point goal budget. Now, you can trick a bulette by making something taste like elf meat. Were these rules shenanigans worth it? Probably not, but I don't care.

    Color uses Control Solid as a base, assuming 30 points/level as the base cost. I think this spell can actually be useful in some situations, so buying it as part of an alternative abilities array may be worth it.

    Dirty is the inverse of Clean and is built the same way, even though it may seem dumb.

    Dry is the reverse of Dampen. Instead of building it via Create Water with Destruction, I just added "Reversed" to the Dampen build and called it a day.

    Firefinger is just the Ignition perk with minor changes.

    Gather collects small objects into a pile or container.

    Polish polishes an object.

    Sketch is the most expensive spell here. Compared to Arcane Mark, it allows drawing anything, not just symbols, lasts a shorter time, and can be hung in air or attached to an object. It has a lower casting cost and casting time.

    Stitch is a peculiar spell that lets you sew without a needle or thread, and do so much faster than normal. For this spell, there should be a +4 bonus to the roll, but I transformed it into a -40% decrease in the base task time.

    Tie is very similar to the one above. Interestingly enough, Knot-Tying doesn't care about your ST, so I left it at 1.

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells I

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells I

Here, we have not spells from a specific D&D book, but some miscellaneous spells I made as sorcery spells before and that I'd like to rework for wizardry.

Censure is a clerical spell that marks the subject as an outcast.

Death Link is a unique spell that binds two souls together so that whatever happens to one creature also happens to another one.

Disarm is a quasi-attack spell that attempts to disarm the target.

Faith Magic Zone is another clerical spell that slows down arcane spellcasting in the area.

Net is a short-range overhead area binding attack.

Portrait is a spell that captures a scene in a globe of glass.

Reveal Magic makes magic items and creatures under magic effects glow within the area. This is something like a mass Detect Magic where others can identify the auras too.

Shadow Double creates a double of the caster made of shadowstuff.

Souldrinker is an expensive ranged Leech spell.

Town Portal is a spell that creates a gate to a city/town with a fountain on the central square that you have visited before. This (and the previous one) is a spell from Might and Magic.

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells III

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells III

Murderous Mist is a non-incendiary version of Incendiary Cloud.

Probe Thoughts lets you retrieve memories from another creature.

Sandblast is a weak cone attack with a blinding side effect that I basically bullshitted into existence instead of doing things RAW. I based it on the Sand Blast spell from GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells.

Scent is a simple buff that improves the target's smell. I didn't go with Discriminatory Smell because the memorization aspect of this advantage is hard to use when the buff only lasts half an hour.

Slime Wave creates a wave of corrosive green slime. In the original source, it's an spherical effect, but here I decided to turn it into a cone. "Wave" sounds more like a cone to me.

Standing Wave creates a wave that carries a creature or object in a straight line.

Tidal Surge is another conic wave spell that originates from a body of water. Pretty cool.

True Creation is a character point-powered, improved version of Major Creation.

Lesser Vigor grants Rapid Healing.

Vigor grants Very Rapid Healing.

Greater Vigor grants Regeneration.

Visage of the Deity is a weaker variant of Crown of Glory that also doesn't require spending character points.

And that's actually it - that's all the spells from this book that I'd like to have in my games. While in Complete Arcane I skipped only a handful of spells, here I skipped most of them, I think.

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells II

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells II

Crown of Glory is a character point-powered spell that gives you an awesome aura and lets you be understood universally. You also glow.

Crumble is a character point-powered attack spell that can be used if you need to get rid of something fast. 20d on average deals 70 damage, which is enough to crumble a 6"-thick brick wall, 1"-thich mild steel wall or door. At most, this spell deals 120 damage, which can destro a 1'-thick stone wall. Still, this spell is not very powerful for its cost.

Unluck is similar to Curse of Ill Fortune. This one has a short duration, milder penalties, and doesn't negate Luck.

Curse of Lycanthropy is a spell that permanently afflicts the victim with lycanthropy. While disadvantageous Alternate Form is a disadvantage, I still have to use an advantageous variant because the lens is a meta-trait that also includes advantages despite having a negative point values. To be able to vary the afflicted forms, I should've used either Alternate Enhancements or Cosmic Power by RAW, but I decided to sidestep this issue with a variable material component. Otherwise, this spell would've become much more expensive and pretty much unusable.

Death Pact is something of a conditional resurrection spell that is cast as a buff on a living creature instead of a dead body. Required a lot of rules-stretching.

Decomposition is a spell that makes wounds around the caster fester, dealing extra damage.

Divine Sacrifice is the first spell that costs HP to cast instead of FP. It temporarily buffs your Striking ST.

Hawkeye is a spell that lets you see farther.

Maddening Scream is an incapacitating spell that makes the victim run around and scream wildly. I had to come up with my own modifier for that.

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells I

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells I

I've just finished selectively adapting spells from Complete Arcane, but there is another major book - Complete Divine. While this one does have some spells for wizard, it has many more spells for clerics and druids that just won't work as arcane spells in terms of flavor. Thus, it's time to give divine spellcasters some love.

Anger of the Noonday Sun creates a blinding flash centered on you that also damages undead and oozes. In Complete Divine, this is an exlusive druidic spell, but I feel that it's a perfect Sun domain cleric spell.

Beast Claws gives you claws.

Beget Bogun is a highly specific spell to animate a bogun - something like a druidic homunculus.

Blast of Force is an invisible force beam attack.

Bolt of Bedevilment (singular) is a beam spell that may daze the target.

Bolt of Glory is a beam spell that damages undead, evil outsiders, and Negative Energy Plane natives.

Briar Web is a version of Entangle that doesn't work underwater but also deals minor impaling damage if the grappled victim moves or struggles. It's also one point cheaper, so it's an objectively better choice unless you want to venture underwater.

Castigate is a verbal rebuke that causes pain to creatures not of your alignment or deafens those of your alignment. Mostly useful against outsiders and divine spellcasters.

Chain of Eyes is a pretty cool spell. I felt lazy, so I just slapped Cosmic on the advantage and called it a day.

Druidic Spellcasting Revised

Druidic Spellcasting Revised

It's time to solve the druid question. I have a problem with druids in GURPS - I love druids conceptually, but mechanically... let's say that they are subpar in most situations. For the most part, this is due to their power modifier. In this post, I'd like to talk about the power modifiers, about druids in general, and try to rework my druidic spellcasting framework into something more functional.